To play that role well, park design, development, and upkeep can’t have a negative impact on the environment. In fact, the new guidelines are designed to ensure “NYC’s parks clean our air and absorb storm water, reduce the urban heat island effect, provide habitat, and address the challenges of climate change.”

The manual contains hundreds of best practices. Some examples of issues covered include:

“Keeping rain water within parks for the use of plantings rather than sending it to sewers

Increasing the resiliency of plantings by considering the soil, the effects of climate change, the plant type and future maintenance needs.

According to The Architect’s Newspaper, the new guidelines have already won support from the NYC design community. Tricia Martin, president of the New York Chapter of the American Society of Landscape Architects (ASLA), said: “It’s an incredibly useful document that takes you step by step through new thinking about parks in a way that doesn’t throw the baby out with the bathwater. There’s a new [sustainability] layer, in addition to the beauty, history and culture.” Linda Pollak, a landscape designer, added: “It’s a remarkable document in that it brings the institutional knowledge into one place.”